NSIMA EKERE'S NDDC AS A POLITICAL PARTY 

By George Umoren 


When Governor Nyesom Wike of Rivers State   accused the new board of the Niger Delta Development Commission,  NDDC,  of allegedly diverting funds meant for development of the region to nurturing the political aspirations of some of its members for 2019, people thought he was raising a false alarm. 

But it is now clear, the straight shooting Wike knew what he was saying, given the recent actions and activities of Obong Nsima Ekere, the managing director of the NDDC,  in his home state, Akwa Ibom, where his ambitious campaigns to run for Governor in 2019,  has seen him throw caution to the winds, by recruiting agents to destabilize the state and undermine efforts of the state governor, Mr Udom Gabriel Emmanuel to develop the state. 


Governor Wike  raised the alarm , at Government House, Port Harcourt, during an interactive meeting with the board of NDDC when they paid him a courtesy call earlier in the year. 


He noted that , there was no way the commission could achieve its mandate with some of the board members nursing governorship ambition, adding that,  the NDDC  had been allegedly  reduced to a  fund raising ground to oil political dreams. He said: “NDDC is a fund raising commission for politicians who want to run for elections.   

Wike,  who decried the way NDDC is structured, argued that, it will not work, as it leaves room for  so much corruption. Nobody was left in doubt that, this was a tongue lash on Nsima Ekere, whose desperation to be governor and his collaborator board members, are working to amass wealth to contest elections  in their various  states.

 Governor Wike rightly expressed fear that,  the current board had abandoned its mandate for politics. 

As a solution, Wike made a recommendation.“If the Federal Government wants NDDC to work, why appoint a person who plans to contest  the governorship election of his state? Why not appoint  a technocrat?” 

Wike is not alone on this. Governor Ifeanyi Okowa of Delta State, was mild in his cautious rebuke of NDDC, by urging the intervention agency to involve the various communities in the state in project planning and execution.

Ifeanyi Okowa said,  siting of meaningful projects in the region could only be achieved when the actual needs of the people of the area were considered. According to him,  the spirit of partnership and cooperation between the NDDC and the state government  on the development of the Niger Delta,is the way forward. Okowa said, "The state and your agency need this cooperation to help our people. We need to create room for the contribution of the people in project planning and execution. l agree with you that we need projects that will impact more on the lives of the people. l want to call for proper monitoring of projects, especially road projects, and the need to strengthen and fund the department for quality delivery, because this is important in the execution of projects.” 


In what stopped short of passing a vote of no confidence in the NDDC, Okowa restated his support for the calls on the Federal Government to re-constitute the Advisory and Project monitoring committees of the commission. 


Senator Ndoma-Egba, Chairman of the NDDC board who led the delegation to the meeting with the two governors, said the commission was ready to embark on joint venture projects with member states in the spirit of partnership. At both instances in Rivers and Delta states,  Ndoma-Egba said the delegation was in the state to solicit the support and partnership of the state government on reforms of the NDDC.


If Rivers and Delta states were lucky to even be granted the privilege of a courtesy call, Nsima Ekere blinded by ambition and contempt for the Governor of Akwa Ibom State, the very office he is desperate to occupy, has refused to as much as, recognize Mr Udom Emmanuel as Akwa ibom State Governor, much less, pay him the solidarity visit. In his recent political Thanksgiving service, he demonstrated that disdain by the shabby display of disrespect meted out to the Governor in the souvenir programme for the event,where in his characteristic vain glory, he bedecked himself with titles and prefix of, 'His Excellency', while striping Governor Emmanuel bare of any such niceties. 

At the risk of sounding angry, The Akwa Ibom Governor, Udom Emmanuel, reached out to the NDDC management given their sabotaging tip toeing, around projects in Akwa Ibom State, which they either end up abandoning or doing a shoddy job, and thereby, the cause a total distortion of the State's development plan.

Governor Emmanuel decrying the shenanigans of the Nsima Ekere led NDDC said, “We hear that NDDC is planning to open more roads (in the state). If they do that we would resist it because that would distort our development plan,” 

Mr. Emmanuel, according to the statement, said Akwa Ibom State already has a structure and system that was “running” and that NDDC should “come under that structure so that we can anchor development together”. Governor Udom stated the obvious, when he  said, the state governors across the Niger Delta region were getting worried that NDDC was muddling up things in the various states.

The truth is, the NDDC like Governor Wike said, has over the years derailed and failed to achieve her mandate of helping to transform the Niger Delta region, because, it has been turned to a launch pad for politicians seeking to run for the office of Governor of their States. 

Looking back, Chief Onyeama Ugochukwu (Abia), Mr Timi Alaibe (Bayelsa) Bassey Dan Abia (Akwa Ibom) Ambassador Sam Edem (Akwa Ibom), Engr Udo Mboso (Akwa Ibom), among many others, who were leaders or top management staff of the NDDC board at various times, all nursed, or actually ran for Governor of their states. The result is the endemic corruption in the NDDC that is now so entrenched, that, all they do is, money laundering and looting the agency, with a view to amass wealth to fund their usually ill fated, governorship projects. 

Nsima Ekere is only sustaining the tradition established by his predecessors in NDDC, but in a more despicable scale. Only this week, it was exposed he flew to Lagos state, to recruit a Lagos based, self-styled activist lawyer, Barrister Inibehe Effiong, allege engaging him for a fee of 20million naira to organize a protest March against his state government in Lagos and Uyo against the proposed construction of a Governors Lodge in Lagos. Their meeting at an eatery in Lagos was however leaked to the press by an insider, who was disturbed by the antics of Nsima Ekere and the sheer hypocrisy of the said Barrister Effiong to play the devil's advocate. 

Nsima Ekere has turned the NDDC to a political party and bastardized the agency like never seen in the history of the NDDC. The name of the NDDC under Ekere and his politics according to one social commentary by Peterside Egoh is, NIGER DELTA DECEIT COMMISSION.  As far as Egoh is concerned, the DEVELOPMENT in NDDC has been replaced with DECEIT. He appealed to the Federal Government to urgently come to the rescue of the NDDC and save the body to return to its original obligations, or in the alternative, register her formally as a political party to satisfy the craving of Obong Nsima Ekere and his boards rape of the NDDC finances with impunity to fund his doomed governorship project.  

(George Umoren writes from Port Harcourt, Rivers State)